


just give me something to believe

by suzukiblu



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5 + 1 Fic, And Also Boyfriend Material, And Is Ridiculous, Bucky Barnes/Therapy OTP, CA:TWS AU, Casual Espionage For Fun And Superheroing, Fix-it fic, Fluff, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Riley Lives, Sam Wilson is an Avenger, non-AOU compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 02:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4462595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzukiblu/pseuds/suzukiblu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam had expected to be the one sending the care packages when he’d decided to opt out of taking another tour after DC and the world’s most dramatic leave, but Riley’s as damn contrary as ever, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just give me something to believe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paper-kraken](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=paper-kraken).



> Written for [paper-kraken](http://paper-kraken.tumblr.com/), who wanted 5+1 times that Riley sent Sam gifts/messages in an AU where Riley survived the mission that killed him pre-TWS, Sam’s service is up but the EXO-7 program is still running, and AOU never happened but Sam’s joined the Avengers. Also, Bucky’s around and remembers himself, because NO-FLY ZONE FOR ANGST, YO.

“Somebody left this box of junk in the hall,” Bucky announces as he steps into Sam’s living room. “Good news, it’s not explosive.” 

“. . . you really need to chill, man,” Sam says, squinting up at him from the couch. Bucky just drops a much-abused package on his stomach and then disappears into the kitchen, presumably to either get a snack or menace Steve into making him one. Sam picks up the package and mentally gives up. It’s Bucky; checking for explosives is a sign of affection. Not even one of the handful of leftover Winter Soldier ones, according to Steve. 

Sam’s _really_ got to get some more detailed war stories out of those two one of these days. 

Definitely not today, though, because he recognizes the truly tragic chicken-scratch attempt at handwriting that is addressing this particular package, not to mention the characteristic mish-mash that is the postage. It’s from Riley. Sam had expected to be the one sending the care packages when he’d decided to opt out of taking another tour after DC and the world’s most dramatic leave, but Riley’s as damn contrary as ever, of course. 

Still, he spends one leave in DC with bad timing and helps Captain America and the Black Widow steal _one_ EXO-7 and bring down one helicarrier--okay, _three_ helicarriers, but still--and suddenly he’s a superhero, apparently. The government genuinely hadn’t been decide if they wanted him on the payroll or wanted him court-martialed, so he’d just made the decision for them before anyone trying to cover their own ass decided to go for the easy target for a sacrificial lamb. 

Not that he wouldn’t have enjoyed watching Steve bring down the hammer of public opinion on anyone who’d tried, but _someone_ had to have pity on the stupid. Also, Steve’d had enough shit going on with Bucky at the time anyway. 

It had meant leaving Riley, though. And now it means an Avengers Tower apartment, super-soldiers eating all his snacks, and care packages with chicken-scratch handwriting getting left outside his door by random Starkbots. 

It’s a step up from getting shot at in a desert, but not as big a step up as it could be, Sam admits to himself as he heads over to his desk for the letter opener--well, the throwing knife Bucky replaced his letter opener with after using the letter opener itself to stab a HYDRA agent back in DC, but same difference. The knife works better anyway. Sam slits the tape on the packaging carefully and nudges the flaps open with the flat of the knife, and nearly spills a mishmash of assorted packing peanuts everywhere. 

Middle of the damn desert, and Riley’s upcycling the packing material. Of course, Sam thinks wryly as he fishes through the mess. 

Completely unnecessary packing material, on top of that, because the only thing he finds in the package is a metric fuckton of Middle Eastern candy--the actual legit stuff from the markets that Sam’s always craving, not the shitty overpriced knockoffs in the “exotic foods” section of the disturbingly expensive grocery store Tony Stark keeps telling them all to order from. 

That dumbass Riley, he should’ve kept all this. How often does he get off-base, much less off-base with time to _shop_? Especially _these_ days. 

Damn thoughtful bastard. 

Sam stacks up the packages of candy on the desk, then checks under the packing peanuts. There’s no letter, but he finds one last box of lokum and a quickly scribbled note that says _love you, babe!_ and is signed with a crooked heart and the ugliest drawing of a bird he’s ever seen. It’s wearing goggles--the bird, not the heart. 

“Dumbass,” he mutters like he would if Riley were here, then goes to stick the note up on the fridge and warn the super-soldiers in his kitchen about the wrath he’ll bring down on them if they touch his boyfriend-candy. 

.

.

.

The next package comes a month later and is again delivered by Bucky, same as the last three; he’s also killed another two HYDRA agents with Sam’s apple peeler and replaced it with a bigger throwing knife. Sam’s starting to suspect the guy has no other idea how to be friends and can’t tell if he should blame HYDRA or Steve “Fight Me” Rogers. 

There’s a letter this time, which he’s not too proud to admit is a hell of a lot more important to him than the included pair of matching clay falcon statues--although those are pretty damn adorable, actually, Riley is such a _sap_. Thousands of miles between them and the dumbass still found an excuse to buy stupid matching bookends. He thinks he's so fucking cute. 

Then again, so does Sam. If he had to pick a dumbass, at least he picked a thoughtful one. 

The letter is less a letter and more a journal entry--several journal entries, actually. By the looks of it Riley just scrawled down a few paragraphs about his day whenever he had time, which is not a new method of letter-writing for him. Originally Sam found it kind of jarring and awkward to read, but now it’s endearing. Or endearingly awkward; he hasn’t totally decided. 

He’s damn happy to have the letter, either way. E-mail doesn’t have the same feeling of permanence or feel quite as much like _Riley_. Riley didn’t touch it or scribble his horrible chicken-scratch handwriting all over it or draw weird shit in the margins, didn’t leave graphite smudges or smear the ink dragging the side of his hand across the paper as he wrote. A letter feels more alive and like something that Sam needs to know Riley is. 

A letter is _proof_. 

He remembers how close that RPG came in Bakhmala. He remembers how close a lot of things came, and he’s sure Riley remembers the same for him. That’s how it works. Hell, Riley’s probably seen how close it came for him on the news, and maybe that’s worse--seeing where he’s not, seeing the empty space in the sky where it used to be them together. Even now, every time Stark or Rhodes or Thor cuts through that space Sam feels a jolt of confusion like he’s missed a step in mid-air. 

Riley feels it too, judging from his letters, and that just makes Sam wish they were still flying together even more. That jolt isn’t _safe_ , and even knowing Riley’s got a new wingman he can’t help feeling the other doesn’t have anyone to catch him if he goes down. The next RPG might hit. The next mission might fail. The next-- 

So yeah. Sam’s glad to have the letter. 

.

.

.

Sam gets into work a week later to find a heavily taped-up envelope with Riley’s chicken-scratch handwriting but no postage on it left in his office. Kelsey at the front desk says the pararescue officer who delivered it couldn’t stay. She had the look, Kelsey says without elaborating. She doesn’t need to; Sam understands. 

He had trouble being here at first too. He thinks just about everyone does. It’s a near-universal experience, like too-soft mattresses and plastic bags in the road and loud noises at the wrong moment and feeling like you’re doing it all wrong. 

He thinks about that RPG all the time. He thinks about the helicarriers all the time. He thinks about the Triskelion crashing down behind him as he leapt out a window without his wings on, he thinks about Riley alone in the sky, he thinks about--

Anyway. 

Sam opens the envelope with another one of Bucky’s throwing knives--he doesn’t even know what this one replaced, he just found it on his dresser the other day--and a thumb drive and a load of ugly-ass confetti and glitter falls out all over his desk. Where the hell Riley even _got_ confetti . . . 

“Ass,” Sam mutters, already knowing he’s going to be sweeping up glitter for days. Admittedly, that’s not exactly a complaint. He sticks the thumb drive in his computer and finds a video file on it, which he opens. 

He knew it’d be Riley, of course, but his chest still tightens when he sees the other’s face in close, obviously fiddling with whatever camera’s recording this. Technology-incompetent moron, he thinks, hand fisting tight against the desk. The camera pulls back, and Riley grins into it, bright and wicked. Sam’s back and shoulders feel naked; his office feels too small and stifling, claustrophobic and dim. 

_Hey, baby,_ Riley mouths soundlessly, then looks off-screen as the clip cuts out. Sam’s fist tightens. The screen clears to show Riley on his back in his bunk, grinning wide again and already talking shit. Sam decides to call the sound he makes a laugh. It’s close enough. Riley blows the camera a kiss and laughs for real. The sound’s a little staticky, but it burns sweet and strong inside Sam’s chest. 

The next clip is all desert sky, big and empty and blue, blue, _blue_ ; then it cuts out too and a slightly different sky replaces it, this one later in the day. There’s a pair of people in EXO units flying through it _(not EXO-7s; they’re all the way up to the EXO-9 the last Sam definitely did not hear, if the government asks)_ , but neither of them are Riley--Sam can’t see them well enough for any identifying features to pop out, but they’re both too stiff and unsure in the sky to be him. 

And even if they weren’t, Riley’s the only one who flies like Riley. 

Which is proven a moment later, when Riley flies into the screen and loops around the pair of them. He’s teaching the other two how to fly, Sam recognizes immediately, both from their own lessons back in the day and Riley’s obvious restraint; they’ve both always been as reckless as the unit let them get away with, which had been pretty damn reckless after their flight scores had come back. Too much, Sam can admit to himself now, now that he’s with the Avengers and doing even worse on the regular. 

But watching Riley fly is still the best damn thing he’s ever seen with his own feet on the ground. 

He misses the sight of that stupid face up close and grinning at him, though. 

.

.

.

“I’m, uh, not sure how to describe it,” Banner says awkwardly, making a helpless little gesture with his hands. He and Sam are reporting back on their accidental scouting mission into a HYDRA base they tripped over while trying to evade pursuit without having to destroy the _entire_ surrounding area. It went badly, and the surrounding area is no longer available to be inspected in person. 

“Hold up, I got pics,” Sam says, pulling out his phone and swiping it awake. God bless modern technology and military-issued forethought. Stark flicks his fingers and a burst of blue light flashes across the table and surrounds his phone, then projects his screen into the air in front of the table. 

Well, he did bless modern technology, Sam figures, eyeing the projection wryly as he opens his photo gallery and the photos of the experiments Banner was trying to explain a moment ago. They’re . . . graphic, to put it mildly. There’s a reason not destroying the surrounding area went badly. Barton hisses through his teeth, and Natasha’s expression stays perfectly neutral in that one especially telling way she has. 

“Volunteers,” Bruce says. Considering the fucked-up condition Sokovia is in right now and HYDRA’s long and shining history of subtle machinations and manipulation, Sam wouldn’t necessarily put it that way himself. “Allegedly,” Bruce adds evenly, because he is a rational human being who would _also_ not put it that way. “There were two or three missing subjects, according to the files, but we didn’t get a very good--” 

Riley’s ringtone pops up and Sam instinctively swipes his thumb across his screen to answer, because as rarely as Riley can actually call of fucking _course_ he jumps for the phone every time he hears it. He belatedly realizes the problem with that instinct when the gruesome aftermath of immoral genetic experiments onscreen gets replaced with video of a bag of popcorn and his boyfriend in a motel room bed in his boxer briefs, because okay, yeah, that was apparently a _video_ call. 

“Fuck!” Riley curses in surprise, accidentally knocking both the popcorn and his laptop off the bed, and Sam covers his face with his free hand as the other scrambles for it. Oh God, he forgot Riley had leave. Worse, he forgot _date night_. He forget date night from eight _thousand_ miles away, he is the _worst_ boyfriend to _ever_ boyfriend, Riley is gonna kick him off a _skyscraper_. 

“Reflex, sorry, definitely not the right reflex,” he says, internally dying of mortification and trying to pull his phone out of J.A.R.V.I.S.’s glowy little sphere of influence. The damn thing follows him, clinging to the phone. “Stark!” 

Stark’s too busy cackling to do anything, the ass, and Barton and Thor are both laughing too. Bruce and Bucky are at least _trying_ to keep straight faces, but Natasha’s smirking shamelessly. 

“Riley, I presume?” Steve asks, smiling pleasantly at the screen. Riley looks like he might actually die. Or kill someone. Sam tries to swat the blue sphere off, with zero success. “Nice to finally meet you. Sam’s told us a lot about you.” 

“Told _you_ a lot, maybe,” Stark snorts. “The rest of us had to look soldier-boy up the old-fashioned way.” 

“Breaking into classified government records is _not_ the old-fashioned--” Sam starts, and Natasha and Bucky both immediately look away as Steve’s pleasant smile turns downright _beatific_. Oh for the love of . . . “Never mind. Everyone, this is my boyfriend, Riley. Riley, this is everyone. They’re always like this, this was probably inevitable, I am so sorry.” 

“Yeah, great,” Riley says. He yanked a blanket over his lap at some point in all the flailing, but he still looks like he’d like to hide under the bed outright. Sam’s half-considering pulling the same routine with the table, so . . . “Nice to meet them too. You too. _Sam_.” 

“Sorry,” Sam says, wincing. Riley gives him the look that would normally mean a drastic decrease in fraternization, which Sam hasn’t actually gotten since fraternization stopped being a concern and is now mildly concerned about the new consequences of. 

“I don’t know, I’ve heard of worse ways to meet people. Getting nailed by Mjolnir, that was a rough start,” Steve says, his smile back into normal territory. Well, the new normal--the one that’s been around ever since Bucky showed up at Sam’s back window in DC and started replacing all Sam’s own sharp objects with his own. “And getting lapped eight or twenty times, I hear that can be pretty rough too.” 

“Oh, you’re _hilarious_ ,” Sam says dubiously. Riley’s already laughing, though, the traitor. Not that Sam’s surprised, after the way literally their entire relationship has gone. Still, he’s not gonna complain about seeing _the look_ retreat, so hey, whatever, he’s okay with this turn of events. 

God damn, he _really_ hadn’t wanted to find out what that look had been about to end in. 

“I can’t believe you actually answered the phone while you had the damn thing on--what is this, is this a projector, I seriously can’t even tell. Please tell me I’m not on one of those freaky floating blue screens of death you showed me last time, I am just not comfortable with those things,” Riley says, waving his hands around with an exasperated expression. Sam wisely does not. “Why the hell didn’t you just email me about having an emergency meeting? What, I’m gonna complain about losing date night for the sake of the free world or whatever you’re saving this week?” 

“Uh,” Sam says, wincing. Maybe it was a little early to think he was getting out of finding out the consequences of the look. 

“. . . you forgot it was date night,” Riley says flatly, dropping his hands. “From eight _thousand_ miles away.” 

“In my defense, the Hulk happened,” Sam tells him. 

“I’ll allow for slightly extenuating circumstances,” Riley allows grudgingly, folding his arms. He doesn’t actually look all that “allowing”, though. 

“‘Slightly’?” Bruce asks wryly, glancing up over the top of his glasses. Sam would argue the “slightly” himself, but it’s Riley, and he’s sure if _he_ said it he’d get--

“Did the Hulk happen to _him_?” Riley demands, proving him right before he can even finish the thought. “No? Then it’s slightly. _Date_ night, Wilson!” 

“I know,” Sam says, wincing again. Riley throws a few popcorn kernels at the screen, still looking annoyed. 

“This is what I get for being the respectable one,” he says huffily. Sam’s vaguely concerned to realize Riley _is_ the respectable one. When the hell did _that_ happen? 

Then he catches a glimpse of the amused smirk Captain goddamn _America_ , Mr. Baseball, Apple Pie, and the American Way, is hiding behind his hand and yeah, okay, never mind. Clearly “respectable” is not a thing in their lives anymore. 

.

.

.

A month of stakeouts, mayhem, and fruitlessly barrelling through Sovokia later, Sam wakes up to his apartment buzzer already exhausted and immediately drags his pillow over his head with a groan. The buzzer goes off again. 

It’s _four-thirty_ in the _morning_. And okay, usually he gets up pretty early to run, but not this early. He just got back into the damn country! 

“J.A.R.V.I.S., who’m I killing at this ungodly hour?” he grunts into the pillow. 

“Sergeant Barnes, Staff Sergeant Wilson,” J.A.R.V.I.S. replies mildly; Sam bolts out of bed immediately and is halfway to the door before his pillow even hits the floor. Bucky, unlike just about everyone else in this damn tower, only knocks at this hour either because he needs urgent medical attention or because he needs access to kill an intruder. If it’s the latter, Sam’s hoping he’s got his own knife on him for once; he’s running low on sharp objects. 

“Bucky?” he asks as he opens the door. A flash goes off in his face, and Sam blinks stupidly. Bucky turns the battered camera in his hands over and then holds it out to him. 

“Not explosive,” he informs him. Sam takes it, still half-blind. 

“What the _hell_ , man,” he says. Bucky pauses, expression considering, then just shrugs. 

“Good morning,” he says, like he just remembered that’s a thing people do. Possibly he did just remember, so Sam doesn’t push it. “It’s from Riley.” 

“You’re opening my mail now?” Sam asks, raising an eyebrow as he automatically opens the gallery to delete whatever guaranteed monstrosity of a picture Bucky took of him. 

“No,” Bucky says, looking a little insulted. Sam supposes he would be; as if he’d even be able to _tell_ if Bucky was opening his mail. Although that doesn’t explain why the camera’s out of whatever box it came in. 

He flips through the gallery in search of the picture Bucky took, sliding past pictures of desert sky and laughing soldiers and half-eaten MREs, dirt and sand and Riley’s bunk and crumpled paperwork, and also a disassembled but clearly labelled EXO-10 unit, which immediately marks the contents of this camera as about nine kinds of illegal and insanely dangerous in the wrong hands, big damn surprise. 

Well, if he hadn’t already known it was Riley’s camera, It’s _definitely_ Riley’s camera. 

Okay, neither of them is ever going to be respectable, Sam thinks wryly, briefly examining another shot of the disassembled EXO-10. Stark’s going to be goddamn _delighted_ about this, so he immediately decides to save it for bribe material and keeps going through the gallery. There’s a few more shots of the unit and a few photos of some very rough blueprints with the number “11” prominently displayed in the top corner, and then it switches to Bucky’s photos with a selfie that was shot from below so the tower looms in the background, two guys outlined by the barely-lightening sky leaning in close to each other in the foreground. The guy on the left is Bucky doing that half-smirk he does in every photo, afraid to get caught looking any other way, and the guy on the right’s got ugly touristy sunglasses shoved back on his head and a big, stupid jackass grin on his face. 

Sam completely forgets about deleting the picture. 

.

.

.

Sam runs up, not down; the penthouse is a lot closer than the lobby, and his wings are on his back before he’s halfway up the stairs. He could’ve taken the elevator, but there’s no way he could stay still for it, even with as short as J.A.R.V.I.S. always keeps the wait. 

“Whoa, hey there, bird-boy, where’s the fire?” Stark asks from the makeshift workbench he’s made of his coffee table, looking alarmed. Sam would normally be more careful about barging in on Stark because the man’s frequently up to something explosive and even more frequently hanging out with either Pepper Potts or Banner, neither of whom should be startled, but right now he really doesn’t care. “Literally, did some little woodland grove catch, is that the issue here--” 

“Shut up, Stark!” Sam barks, running right past him to jump off the balcony. If the other says anything back, he doesn’t hear it. Hell, he doesn’t even know if Bucky followed him up the stairs. 

Neither of those things is really a priority right now, though. 

An EXO-7 may not be the latest thing on the market, even with the seriously impressive StarkTech upgrades, but it still more than gets the job done. Sam’s wings snap out and he spirals down around the tower, eyes already scanning the ground and goggles cutting through the still-dim morning light and sharpening his view of the early risers and late nighters in the street below. It doesn’t take long. 

He lands hard, clearing the surrounding sidewalk, and Riley turns to grin at him. 

“Hey, baby,” the other greets casually, pushing up those stupid tourist sunglasses the same way he was wearing them in the picture in his camera as his grin stretches even wider. He looks just like he did _in_ the picture, except _here_. “Nice tower. Met your buddy getting coffee, he’s really well-armed. And I don’t even mean that in the ‘offensive pun’ kind of way. Oh, and I decided not to go for another tour, did I mention that?” 

“You _moron_ ,” Sam curses roughly, and yanks him in for a kiss. 

The dumbass always comes up with the best gifts.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://suzukiblu.tumblr.com/) ❤


End file.
